


In Dreams

by Dargelos (Dargie)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dargie/pseuds/Dargelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rupert Giles' dead lovers haunt his dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dreams

In another reality this might have worked.

In another reality there wouldn't have been all this... baggage to contend with, and they might've met, and courted like two normal, middle-aged people instead of shagging on top of police cars and worrying while Buffy was out kicking vampire arse. In another reality there wouldn't have been that thing about Buffy standing between them like, like a Netherion demon, all warty with ugly thoughts and jealousies. Joyce wouldn't have resented him for his influence on her daughter, and Buffy could cheerfully have disliked the new man in her mother's life until he won her over with his honest affection for her mother. And his British charm, of course.

What he didn't like were these dreams in which the ghosts of dead lovers came to visit. Oddly, he would've expected Jenny's visits to be the worst, the most painful. But she was peaceful. He wouldn't have expected that, but he was grateful. Jenny was at peace, and only came back occasionally to see how he was doing. To tell him that she had loved him and she was always going to be looking out for him.

It was Joyce's presence that was unsettling, perhaps because she was, herself, so unsettled, not only by death but by what her life had been. "Perpetually bewildered," she'd once called herself, though he didn't remember if that had been while she was alive or after, when she came to him in his dreams. "I hate feeling that way," she'd said. "I hated never understanding what was going on in my life." And then she'd add, with rueful humor, "Which means I never understood what was going on with Buffy. Do you think it was wrong of me to let her become my life like that?"

He had to admit that he didn't think she had much choice. And again, he regretted ever having convinced Buffy to keep her secret from Joyce. "I'm sorry. I didn't deal wisely with either of you," he admitted. For that he got one of those sweet Joyce smiles. "You were only doing your job, Rupert."

Bollocks, he thought, but he didn't say it, having a deep-seated respect for the legitimately dead.

Sometimes, though, when she seemed about to derail, he'd kiss her, and then the dream would melt into a long, erotic encounter that usually ended like a Marcel Duchamps installation; Buffy with a moustache blessing the union with blood, crossed stakes and unintelligible French. That, and the sun in his eyes.

For a while he wondered if he hadn't got a succubus on his hands, and he spent quite a long time reading up on things he already knew, things that only underscored the fact that this was not some demonic force at work, but just...

Just what?

Just the overactive imagination of a fussy old bachelor? Just the ghost of a woman who had died with too much left undone? Sometimes, in the morning, with the sun no longer in his eyes, he'd sit at his tiny kitchen table, drinking coffee, and he'd think about Joyce, and all the things he should have said, including "Would you like to have dinner with me?" Because he saw now how right it would have been. Not passionate but comfortable. And convenient, yes, which was one reason why he'd never done it to begin with. He'd feared, in his constipated British way, that it might seem too convenient. If he'd just been able to get past that, just...

The dregs of the coffee went down the sink along with his regrets because it didn't pay to beat one's self up over what should have been. Joyce was gone. She'd have been just as dead had they become a couple, and he'd still be standing alone in his kitchen wondering where his days would lead him now that he'd left Sunnydale for good. Again.

He splashed some water on his face and turned off the tap. It wasn't so bad, really, these visits from dead lovers. In a way they were becoming comfortable which he feared might be a sign of advanced age, or even looming senility. But on the whole, he didn't regret a night spent dreaming in the arms of someone he'd cared for since it made him feel less alone.

Now if Ethan Rayne ever died...

He put the cream back in the refrigerator and went to check his email. Some stones were best left unturned.


End file.
